The Workplace That Holds Its Own

The importance of place on television

Originally published in Watercooler Journal

The only reason we like workplace shows — the only reason why workplace shows work at all — is because the workplace becomes a character. Played by the set designer and the lighting guys and the cinematographer, the workplace becomes its own being, interacting and bouncing off the characters just as well as the human actors do. Consider Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce of Mad Men; consider 30 Rockefeller Center in 30 Rock. We know Don Draper’s office and the TGS With Tracy Jordan set just as well as we know Draper or Jordan.

Whenever a workplace doesn’t work well as a character, or isn’t communicated properly, the results are awful. Almost always. Remember NBC’s ill-intentioned addition to its Thursday night lineup a few years back, Outsourced? Aside from being racially tone-deaf and generally unfunny, the workplace felt boring and tired. Outsourced didn’t do anything new with what we were expecting. Also, it was really racist.

Workplaces seem to have gotten progressively more irreverent in recent years. In Cheers, everyone kind of took the bar setting seriously — it was their job. They couldn’t afford to fuck that up. They had fun, but did their jobs. In 30 Rock? Two of the main running jokes through the whole show is that Tracy and Jenna never do anything. Granted, that’s a show about c-list TV stars, but take The Office. Jim doesn’t seem all too interested in keeping his job, even as he gets promoted and gains more and more respect in the office.

In a broader context, places that hold their own against human characters always add to a show. The White house in Breaking Bad comes to mind (especially the pool. Cue Hank yelling “Hey-oh, pool party!” when Skyler walks into the pool and starts floating during her existential crisis). The Walking Dead is an almost unbearably dull show, but it’s really good at making places stick in the mind, even if the characters don’t.

The best workplace show on right now may as well be Veep, especially in a post-30 Rock world. Veep gets the weird, incestual world of DC insider politics so well that people who really work these jobs introduce themselves as Veep characters. There’s nothing about the world of Veep that feels like it’s not based in some kind of truth about what the characters do, and that’s what makes it such a terrifyingly funny show. It works because the most basic thing about it, the place it’s set, is dead-on.

That’s what shows like Outsourced and The Mindy Project (better than Outsourced, by the way) don’t get about the workplace — it’s not just somewhere your characters exist, it’s somewhere they work every day. There are quirks and eccentricities to all workplaces. You have to get the personality of the workplace down, or the show will never work.